


l'appel du vide

by Rupzydaisy



Series: the haruspices sing on [1]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Pre-Canon, s1ep3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-04-03 17:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21494275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rupzydaisy/pseuds/Rupzydaisy
Summary: She’s done it before, walking precariously on a ledge. Only difference was, last time she had an audience..Asriel finds her climbing out of the window of her husband’s study, but she only lets go once she’s thrown a look over her shoulder. At him. With a look in her eye that was piercing and dark and full of a madness he would never come to understand, no matter how alike they are. Then she’s gone in a flash of green silk, her monkey following like a golden beam of light in the dark.He lurches forward, hand outstretched, a shout caught in his throat. It works its way out by the time he reaches the window, palms slamming into the wood.“Marisa!”
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Series: the haruspices sing on [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1609966
Comments: 6
Kudos: 105





	l'appel du vide

Asriel finds her climbing out of the window of her husband’s study, but she only lets go once she’s thrown a look over her shoulder. At him. With a look in her eye that was piercing and dark and full of a madness he would never come to understand, no matter how alike they are. Then she’s gone in a flash of green silk, her monkey following like a golden beam of light in the dark. 

He lurches forward, hand outstretched, a shout caught in his throat. It works its way out by the time he reaches the window, palms slamming into the wood. 

“Marisa!” 

When Asriel leans out to see, the net curtain blowing gently onto his face, he watches how she just stands there overlooking the garden bathed in silvery moonlight. It strikes her brow, illuminating the hollows under her eyes. She doesn’t look up when he calls and calls her to her again, and he struck by an unfamiliar feeling of hesitancy; wondering whether to leave the window and hurry down the stairs, or to simply follow her way down. 

“Be quick about it.” Stelmaria tells him, tail swishing back and forth. 

Marisa knows.

She always knows. 

Asriel had hardly moved an inch backwards, an imperceptible sway, and then she was moving forwards again towards the ledge. He spares a fleeting moment wondering if she had felt his hesitation. He wouldn’t put it past her. 

“Marisa- No!” 

He hangs out of the window, watching with wide eyes as she swings herself up onto the edge of the balcony. The grey stone ledge was barely a brick thick, only a little wider than her bare feet as she splayed her toes out, feeling the grit of it under her skin. Her shoulders were looser, hanging like the hinges had been torn through, and her hair had slipped free from the normally tame curls and now whipped about her face in the gentle breeze. 

“What do you think? Wouldn’t it be easier?” Marisa asked, finally looking back at him. 

He feels the lash of her tongue, the sharpness radiating off her and his palms grip the windowsill tight. It was rare to see her like this, rarer still to see her this far gone. “What do you mean?” 

“This.” She tipped her head back, and he sees her clenched jaw ripple in the half-light. “Instead of everything else. You were never meant to mean anything to me. Now look at what you’ve done.”

Her monkey stared up at him, blank-eyed, and with its little grey fists curled up. 

Stelmaria nudged him with her nose and told him plainly, “The window it is.” 

Asriel climbs out of from the windowsill, lowering himself down to the balcony below with more speed and less grace that she had done. The soles of his shoes hit the stone and when he straightens up she’s looking down on him, as she’s always done, but with watering eyes and a desperation he never thought he’d see her wear. 

He had always thought of her as a bastion of composure. Her ability to enter a room and instantly know where she stood, and how better elevate her position amongst friends, foes, and those deemed worthy of her time was something he had never seen, and most likely never see again. She was formidable in every sense of the word, with every inch of her intentions. Her smile would never slip, unless she wanted it to. An eyebrow would arch, delicately, just so, to convey a specific amount of amusement or disdain. Utter control at all moments; she was ice under her skin in those room, a magnificent counter to his fire.

And despite all of her years learning to better herself, and all of her theories on the workings of the world around her, she had fallen for him too. 

He raised an arm, “Marisa, come down from there.” 

“I shan’t.” She swayed along the balcony edge, one foot in front of the other, tipping sidewards away from him so hard he drew back as a sliver of fear jabbed at his chest. Her flushed cheeks were spots of blotchy pink against her pale face. “What use would it be? How could I possibly survive this?” 

“I don’t understand.” Asriel stared up at her, in horror at the madness that had overtaken her. “What’s wrong?”

She spun on the spot, heels and toes with empty space underneath. Her chin tipped down once more as she gazed at him, her eyes as black as the abyss. “You know what’s wrong.” 

“I-” 

“You, with your ideas, and your words, with all your scholarly cleverness, and wild worldliness. Flaunting a new woman on your arm for years, until...oh but then it was a different sort of game, wasn’t it?” Marisa spat, head shaking and fingers gripping the air with anger. 

All the while, her monkey sat on the balcony, a few feet away. Neither a comfort, nor a hindrance to her erratic ramblings. 

She came to a halt and only swayed gently on the spot. In this new stillness, Asriel watched as she was weighed down by her thoughts. They turned her knees leaden, her feet shifted to bear the new burden. Her mouth fell open and her spine shuddered. “How do you think this will go? Other than ruin and shame.” 

Asriel realised immediately, reaching for her while reeling with the news. “A child?  _ My  _ child?” 

“Ah! He’s caught on!” She lets out one of her charming laughs, one that would resonate around a room like the ringing of a golden bell and turn the head of anyone in its vicinity. “My husband is not nearly so astute.” 

“I don’t care about your husband, Marisa. Now, come down!” As he tries to reach her, she throws her hands up in the air to parade along the balcony further. He follows, ever tethered. 

“No.” 

She turns and faces the drop below. Underneath was the gravel path, and leading onwards with a scatter of white marble chips was a small, twisting path through a rose garden Edward Coulter had cultivated over the years. Each bloom was precisely clipped, thorns were bred out, and flowers with the most beautiful shades and perfumes were coaxed out. Anything less than satisfactory was clipped, alive or not. It was a story she had heard all her life long. It was part of the system of rules she had learnt to live by. 

Marisa paused and her expression turned deeply thoughtful. “If you cared, would we still be here? You’re not in a position to see this through. You never were! So why did you even bother in the first place, you weak, pathetic excuse of a-” 

“Enough!” 

He didn’t give her another chance to turn around or flit away. Instead he leapt up and caught her around her ribs to pull her back down, taking some measure of care so that she landed on him, rather than on the grey stone underneath. The weight of her colliding into him punched the breath out of his lungs. Wheezing, he watched as the monkey slowly walked across the balcony ledge above, and then sat back down to overlook where they lay. When Stelmaria approached and stretched out her neck to brush up against its tail, the monkey raised a hand. For a moment, Asriel wonders if it would be violent, a sharp claw or clenched fist. Lashing out, just as she was. 

Instead, the monkey brought down its hand to brush against Stelmaria’s cheek, roughly, but not to injure. It is just the one movement, and then the monkey is withdrawn again, more so than ever, and its a contrast to the shaking pile of limbs pressed against him. Her usual floral perfume had been usurped by the smell of whisky, accounting for an exaggeration of her usual grace and perhaps the redness of her cheeks. 

“Marisa.” He speaks softly when he’s got her upright once more, not to her feet but sitting against the side of the balcony, propped up between his arms. She is cold, in her thin green dress, and he pulls her close to keep her warm, one hand resting against her arm, the other wrapped around her thin shoulders. “The child is ours.” 

“Ours.” She repeated it blankly, bluntly, letting him fold himself around her, resting against his woolen jumper. 

“Yes,  _ ours _ .” He makes that claim, so that she could read value into it, knowing that for all intents and purposes it was unlikely he would ever be a part of the child’s life. To him, the future was full of scientific discovery and unwritten achievement. The existence of his child living in a house with another man’s name was something even he couldn’t tear apart and reshape. “I know my limits-”

Marisa turns her head to look at him again with her dark eyes. “ _ Does _ the mighty Lord Asriel have limits?” 

Her voice is still hollow, but the question was lightly mocking as the veneer of decorum slowly settled back onto her, like dust falling after a raging storm. It was always a challenge with her, a dare,  _ please, Lord Asriel, provide some evidence for your laughable, half-cobbled together theory, otherwise you might as well state that the sun does disappear at night and that we are all simply hurtling towards chaos.  _

He nods brusquely, loathe to ever admit it, and sticks to the promise that had emerged fully formed from his heart and fallen from his lips the moment he realised he would be a father, and she, a mother. “But the child _is ours_, and I will watch over it, and you.” 

He lets the words hang in the air between them. There was no sense in trying to convince her further. Any attempts to persuade her, to try and mollify her, or argue, would only push her back up to the ledge. She would resent it and him. In a display of comfort that couldn’t be put to words, Stelmaria lays down beside him and rests her head on Marisa’s knee. It was truth enough. After a few minutes, the golden monkey drops down from the ledge to sit on the stone beside her, resting its back against her bare leg. 

“If  _ anyone _ finds out, I’ll lose everything. Everything I’ve ever worked for.” Marisa mutters under her breath. 

“When has Marisa Coulter feared anything?” Asriel asks back, low and steady, in the dark of the night with the distant stars twinkling above as silent witnesses. 

**Author's Note:**

> l'appel du vide = call of the void


End file.
